Page 33

THIRTY-THREE

SERAPHINE

C assian’s voice still echoed in her ears.

“We had a daughter.”

Not we could have . Not I imagined . He’d said it like he knew . Like some part of him had lived it. Felt it. Lost it.

Seraphine sat in silence, her knees pulled to her chest as the embers of the ruptured ground dimmed behind them. The Veil still pulsed wrong. The magic around the Wyrdlands felt jagged and too loud, like every breath cost too much.

She watched him from the corner of her eye—Cassian leaning against the ruined wall, his jaw tight, arms crossed over his chest like he was trying to hold himself in. The shadows behind him shifted, not like before. They didn’t slither or hunger.

They watched.

Cassian wasn’t the same. She wasn’t sure she was either.

“You saw her,” she whispered finally.

He didn’t look at her. Just nodded once.

“And what else?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Your fire. My blood. Her laugh.”

Her throat closed. “And then?”

“Then the Hollow took her.”

Her heart twisted.

Cassian finally looked at her. His eyes weren’t the color of storm anymore. They were deeper now. Like dusk. Like something ancient trying to burn itself into the present.

“I saw what I’d lose,” he said. “But I also saw what I could fight for.”

She reached for him then, crawling across the broken floor, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, the soot staining her palms. She took his face in her hands.

“I don’t care what the prophecy says,” she murmured. “I don’t care what the Hollow wants. Or what my father thinks I’m supposed to be.”

His brow furrowed. “Sera?—”

“No. Listen to me.” Her voice trembled with fury and love and something desperate between the two. “I choose you. Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s safe. But because I love you. And I’m done letting duty dictate my heart.”

Cassian looked like she’d punched him. And maybe she had. Because that was the first time she’d said it like this. Not in a whisper. Not in a gasp. Not in the aftermath of fire and ruin.

Clear. Certain. Chosen.

His mouth parted like he had something to say—but then the air shifted.

Seraphine’s instincts kicked in at the same moment as his. She spun toward the entrance just as three shadows darted into view—fast, silent, deadly.

Executioners.

Not a fantasy. Not a fear. They were here.

“ Move! ” Seraphine shouted, the cold stone biting her bare soles as she lunged for her glaive.

Cassian was already up. His blade igniting with a low snap , blue-white flames licking along the edge, his stance wide, solid, the storm inside him crackling for a fight.

The first attacker didn’t hesitate.

A woman, taller than Seraphine, face hidden behind a silver half-mask etched with the Emperor’s crest—fangs and flame. Her twin blades shimmered with runes, dark ink that pulsed like veins, dripping magic Seraphine felt before she saw it. The air around them twisted, oily and wrong.

Seraphine ducked beneath the woman’s first strike.

The second nicked her arm, but she didn’t flinch.

Her momentum carried her into a tight spin, and she slammed the flat of her glaive into the assassin’s ribs with enough force to hear the crunch.

The woman flew back into a cracked pillar and didn’t rise.

“Cassian—!” she called.

Two more shadows dropped from the broken rafters, fast and silent .

He was already there, intercepting them in a spray of heat and steel.

The first blade clanged off his forearm guard, the second glanced his shoulder. He didn’t stagger. He roared, flames bursting outward, knocking one assassin back into a wall where the stone shattered under their weight.

The other slid low, sweeping Cassian’s legs. He twisted mid-fall, drove his sword into the floor, and caught himself in a crouch.

“ We have to run! ” she shouted.

He blocked a strike with the edge of his flame-wreathed forearm and growled, “ We can’t outrun them! ”

Seraphine parried another strike from the silver-masked woman. She was back on her feet, somehow still moving—turned just in time to see a fourth assassin emerging from the tree line beyond the ruins.

“Then we don’t outrun them,” she hissed, catching Cassian’s eyes. “ We outrun their expectations. ”

He blinked.

Then his expression shifted.

Understanding.

They weren’t going deeper into the Wyrdlands.

Not hiding in the cracks of ancient shadow.

They were going back —to the Citadel. To the Emperor’s doorstep. Because no one would believe they’d be reckless enough to go toward their enemy.

No one but them.

Cassian smirked, a flare of admiration flickering through the heat of battle.

“You’re insane,” he said.

She grinned through blood-streaked lips. “And you love it.”

They were running—through the wreckage of the ruin, leaping over fallen columns and burning stone. The ground behind them shuddered as one assassin launched a bolt of red magic toward Cassian’s back.

Seraphine spun mid-run and slashed it from the air with her glaive. The magic sparked and hissed as it died, but the energy sizzled across her skin.

They were heading toward the last place anyone would look.

Back. To the Citadel.

Because no one would be reckless or stupid enough to run straight into the dragon’s mouth.

They ran.

Through the ruins, the broken trees and warping magic. Through a land that hated them but couldn’t stop them.

The assassins chased. But Seraphine had fire again. Not just Whitefire.

But love.

It burned brighter than prophecy.